Marc Klok, The art of setting goals

Setting and accomplishing goals is an important skill to have as a professional footballer. Amsterdam-born Marc Klok is currently working on his craft at Persija Jakarta in Indonesia. How are you able to set and reach goals? And how do you stay motivated? In this interview, Marc Klok tells you all about it.

Setting the next step

In January 2020 Marc Klok transferred from PSM Makassar to Persija Jakarta with the ambition to become a better and more complete footballer. He says: “This transfer feels like an improvement to me. My goal is to improve myself more in every part of this game. Next to that, this step helps me to become more widely known in Indonesia, because this is a big club around here. Every year it is so different who is going to end up on top of the league, but at least Persija Jakarta is mostly part of the top three. Setting goals is something I do individually, and in some cases, I ask for advice at certain specialists. Right now I am training my physicality with my personal trainer Charley Heus, from J&C Sportrevalidatie. Together with him, I work on the physical goals that I set for myself. Furthermore, I work on my tactical goals with Tactalyse. With Tactalyse, for example, I am very conscious of the goals that I want to reach in games. What do I want to improve in a season? Which goal do I want to work towards? What numbers do I want to achieve in my personal statistics get? How can I improve the number of times that I look around before I receive the ball? These are very clear for me, and that is very important when you want to reach your goals.”

Adapt to the circumstances

It’s not possible to achieve everything on your own, especially in football. You need to operate as a team and this means helping each other. On a tactical basis, Marc had a different way of developing his tactical view on the game compared to the average player in Indonesia. But is this a big issue? “In general I think that I have a more advanced way of looking at tactics due to my time at Dutch youth teams of FC Utrecht. But this is not an advantage if everyone around you plays with a completely different approach. This is something I learned during my time here. I am in their country so I will have to adapt to their playing style. I could get angry and try to change everyone’s tactical thinking, but that would make little sense. You don’t achieve anything with that in the long run. In my opinion, you should also be able to convert that frustration into a learning moment. I think I have also become quite successful because I played football in different countries and had to adapt again and again.”

New goals

Staying motivated is also an important aspect when you want to accomplish goals. How does Marc stay motivated? He stated: ”I think this has a lot to do with my passion. A bit of dedication to yourself, there is always more to achieve. Honestly, this is difficult sometimes. Last year I found out that I had achieved almost all of my goals that I set 3 to 4 years ago. I then noticed that I was wondering what I wanted now. The hunger to make new goals actually relaxed a bit. At that moment I had everything I wanted. But then I realized that this could just be gone again in a second. This mindset keeps me on my toes so I knew I had to set new goals again. Also, the question “how bad do you really want it?” is something I keep in mind to stay focused.”

Motivation

“Sometimes it can be hard to stay motivated. A few years back I had to deal with several things that made it difficult to keep the same motivation. During that time I was not playing a lot of games. Next to that, I got the feeling that nobody at the club I was playing for cared about me. But currently, this feeling is completely gone and I am working hard to achieve more and more. One of the reasons behind this is the fact that I am blessed to have this career and I want to look back on it without any regrets. I want to make sure that I have made every effort to get the most out of my career.”

Practicality

“To make goals reachable it is necessary to make goals practical”, is what Marc mentioned. “I go through my goals every week. I wonder then, am I still sharp? Am I still doing everything it takes? What should I devote more time to? And that’s how I evaluate myself. I do a lot of self-reflection to keep myself sharp. No matter what, I try to train every day, even if it’s only half an hour. Then I know on an annual basis that you are busy every day. Working hard gives me a good feeling to achieve my goals. If I keep doing this it feels like I can still achieve my goals. My goals are not only based around football though. Right now I have my own pair of football shoes, and I have a company, together with Fabian Sporkslede (RKC Waalwijk) where we sell sports equipment under the name Amplify. Here, just like with football, I also have the urge to get everything out of it.”